Roberto Martinez insists he has no beef whatsoever with Noel King over the cruciate injury that left Darron Gibson’s season in tatters.

The Everton ace requires surgery after the horror first-half injury in Tuesday’s 3-1 World Cup qualifier win over Kazakhstan at Aviva Stadium.

Gibson had only just returned from a knee injury in pre-season and had two appearances for the Toffees under his belt before the international window.

King doesn’t feel he rushed Gibson back and said on Wednesday that he deemed the Derryman to be sufficiently “fit and ready” to start both the Ireland games.

And Martinez - who was at the match - has no gripe with King or the FAI and said it was merely a freak injury rather than a case of being pushed too hard, too soon.

“If it had been in the 80th minute then you can go down to the Intel and see if fatigue played a part,” sad the Everton boss. “Obviously this happened in the first half an hour.

“He looked really, really free in his movement and the partnership he showed with James McCarthy during the game was really exciting for everyone and his knee reacted really well.

“When you watch the action, it’s so unfortunate that the knee couldn’t react in any other way. So clearly it’s one of those unexpected moments or incidents in football that you can’t do anything about.”

But while Martinez must plan without Gibson for the foreseeable future, he is confident the midfielder - who has only just returned to international football - will be back playing this season.

“You never want to see ligament damage and I feared the worst, but Darron will be back a stronger player,” said the former FA Cup winning boss with Wigan.

“He brings something that we don’t have in the squad - his understanding on the ball and that partnership with James is going to be a really good one.”

And Martinez is determined to get Gibson back in action later this season after expressing confidence in his recovery having poured over the scan results with Everton’s medical staff.

“I feared the worst when I saw the incident,” he said. “I thought it would be a very difficult injury to overcome but with the scan we are very, very positive..

“He has an anterior cruciate ligament damage but the whole structure of the knee is perfectly fine, nothing else was damaged. It will be a straight forward operation.”

Martinez added: “You can imagine it is really disappointing to lose Darren for whatever space of time. But we are all very positive that whenever he comes back he will come back stronger.

“We will use this time to get him working on other aspects of his fitness and making sure that his knee will be perfectly repaired and ready for whenever he is back.”